Stephanie Read Online Free PDF Page A

Road, by agreement paid in advance, and this as yet unpaid. It was rather a grand flat for an undergraduate, tastefully furnished, good prints on the walls, but she had moved into it a year last January, thanks to a sub from her father. She had shared it with an Australian girl, Jennifer Price, but Jenny had gone back to Adelaide last Christmas when her mother unexpectedly died, and had not returned. Having just met Errol, she had not made an immediate attempt to find a new flatmate because it was marvellously convenient to have the place to oneself. However, she simply couldn’t afford to keep it on on her own, hence the unpaid bill; and she had refused Errol’s offer of help (kept mistress?); so she must find someone fairly quickly. The obvious person was Anne Vincent; she would come like a rocket, but there were drawbacks. Anne was in her first year and had a crush on her. There was a Lezzy feel about the relationship and Stephanie didn’t want to fan it.
    After the sun, a short luminous afterglow, some stars came out, and it was night. Another drink; shut the windows. So far as she had been able to discover, there weren’t any flying insects by the sea in Goa, but there was no point in going out of one’s way to attract them.
    Seven o’clock came. She closed the paperback she had been leafing through, took off her beach wrap, slid into a frock, combed her hair. Then she thought of Krishna. The wretched little man would be waiting at the bottom of the steps. Damn Errol! Quite often he had been unpredictable in his comings and goings before, but not as bad as this. She’d have to take the beastly brooch down herself.
    If she could find it. She tried the drawers but no luck. A brooch was easy to put away in some unobtrusive corner. Maybe the provoking man had taken it with him.
    The only other possible place was his briefcase under the bed. She yanked the case out, feeling felonious and wondering if he would come in and catch her. Well, serve him right. The case was one of those with a combination alphabet to unlock it, but in Bombay she had seen him press an E, two Rs, an O and an L. She did the same and the case flicked open.
    A wad of money, mostly in hundred-dollar bills, nearly fell out. A pile of documents too, on a variety of styles of paper, from good vellum to the flimsiest of cheap decorated Indian paper. Diagrams, maps of various parts of the world, details and dates of consignments. Names of ships, airlines, names and addresses, hotels, towns, Hong Kong, Singapore, Peshawar, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur.
    Then she saw the brooch. It had been dropped in loose and was at the bottom of the case. She grabbed it, put it on the bed, turned to shut the case. One last look: peeping Tom. Most of the papers seemed to be records of consignments, for Greece, for Holland, for England. But there were attached memos, here and there. One read: No worry about customs here. Just pay the officers! Mainly it was flax they were shipping. An odd thing to be concerned with and in such quantity. Wasn’t it?
    Stephanie shut the case and with a toe slid it back under the bed. She thought she would run down and give Krishna the brooch back to quell his anxieties and then come up and finish dressing. Not that anyone dressed much in India. When they came down for the first dinner Errol had remarked: ‘I believe mine must be the only tie in Goa.’ But she would brush her hair again, make up her face.
    Errol had to be home soon. What would she say to him? Not very much. She was trembling. Silly, she needed another drink. Maybe she needed to get altogether stoned tonight. And to stay permanently stoned until she returned to England. Not on hash, but on good honest gin.
    She drank the next down quickly and felt it warming her with a protective glow. A protection against an ugly suspicion. There must be some mistake.
    She picked up the brooch and pinned it to her frock, then took it off, fished out a bit of tissue